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You know, as a recent convert, I still haven't seen the clearly better app quality that everyone's been talking about. Maybe it's just the apps I use, but I gen

You know, as a recent convert, I still haven't seen the clearly better app quality that everyone's been talking about. Maybe it's just the apps I use, but I generally find the quality to be about the same, overall. Android's system preferences and overall look seems _more_ polished to me.

ajross 15y ago
The market app quality thing is mostly bunk. For a while, there was a period where the iPhone gold rush drove all the developers there. All the polished apps arrived first for iOS, and the Android market was filled with what amounted to bad clones of the known iPhone hits. But that was (comparatively) long ago. All the "hit" apps are cross platform now. They generally look the same. Some are better on iOS (Facebook is a good example, though their recent Android releases have gotten a lot better) some on Android (Google Maps on the iPhone was a bad joke, last I checked, and there's no good competitor to use instead). The tier below that is mixed on both platforms, and there's plenty of junk to go around everywhere. But that first year and a half still colors people's perceptions. So the canard gets trotted out every time someone wants to play the flame game. And I tend to agree, actually, that Google has the cleaner and better core UI at this point. Apple wins on the "performance polish" issues: the devices are faster and better tuned, UI interaction is (often vastly) snappier. But I find the actual user experience to be better on Gingerbread than iOS 4 (haven't tried ICS or iOS 5 yet), frankly.
- hospadam 15y ago
  I have used both iOS and Android extensively. I like most of the "core" (email, browser, maps, navigation) apps better on Android - but I still find their third party apps mostly 'behind' their iOS counterparts. While everyone will use different apps - here is a list of apps I use almost daily on the iPhone which have no (or poor) counterparts on Android: Instapaper (Read It Later is pretty good - though their iOS app is much better, too) Instagram AirVideo AlienBlue Reeder DipTic These are the apps which I classify as "almost" as good as their iOS counterparts: Twitter Any of the 'Photo Editing'-of-the-day apps FourSquare
  - revorad 15y ago
    Isn't Lightbox a good alternative to Instagram on Android?
    - hospadam 15y ago
      I don't need duplicated functionality - I need an actual Instagram app. It's not so much the photosharing/editing, it's sharing pictures on their network with my Instagram friends.
      - revorad 15y ago
        They're working on an Android app. Hopefully it'll be out soon.

ajross 15y ago

The market app quality thing is mostly bunk. For a while, there was a period where the iPhone gold rush drove all the developers there. All the polished apps arrived first for iOS, and the Android market was filled with what amounted to bad clones of the known iPhone hits. But that was (comparatively) long ago. All the "hit" apps are cross platform now. They generally look the same. Some are better on iOS (Facebook is a good example, though their recent Android releases have gotten a lot better) some on Android (Google Maps on the iPhone was a bad joke, last I checked, and there's no good competitor to use instead). The tier below that is mixed on both platforms, and there's plenty of junk to go around everywhere. But that first year and a half still colors people's perceptions. So the canard gets trotted out every time someone wants to play the flame game. And I tend to agree, actually, that Google has the cleaner and better core UI at this point. Apple wins on the "performance polish" issues: the devices are faster and better tuned, UI interaction is (often vastly) snappier. But I find the actual user experience to be better on Gingerbread than iOS 4 (haven't tried ICS or iOS 5 yet), frankly.

hospadam 15y ago
I have used both iOS and Android extensively. I like most of the "core" (email, browser, maps, navigation) apps better on Android - but I still find their third party apps mostly 'behind' their iOS counterparts. While everyone will use different apps - here is a list of apps I use almost daily on the iPhone which have no (or poor) counterparts on Android: Instapaper (Read It Later is pretty good - though their iOS app is much better, too) Instagram AirVideo AlienBlue Reeder DipTic These are the apps which I classify as "almost" as good as their iOS counterparts: Twitter Any of the 'Photo Editing'-of-the-day apps FourSquare
- revorad 15y ago
  Isn't Lightbox a good alternative to Instagram on Android?
  - hospadam 15y ago
    I don't need duplicated functionality - I need an actual Instagram app. It's not so much the photosharing/editing, it's sharing pictures on their network with my Instagram friends.
    - revorad 15y ago
      They're working on an Android app. Hopefully it'll be out soon.